I teamed up with local redfish guide Eric Holstman to prefish for some upcoming charters we have in the upper bay systems of Pensacola. A drastic drop in over night temperatures made the bite a little tougher than normal. It also made the 60mph boat ride very uncomfortable, especially for me who not didn’t think to bring gloves or a head mask. I won’t make that mistake again! Our goal for the day was to locate a good number of fish so that our clients would have plenty to catch in the next few days. Our fisrt stop we managed a small, rat red, a striper, and a keeper trout. We didn’t find the large schools of upper slot reds that we usually find this time of year but at least we located some bait with a few fish mixed in. We proceeded to check 10 to 12 more spots only to find a few rat reds at each. The morning acutally started to get frustrating. At 11am we decided to start making our way back to the launch while hitting a few more spots in the mean time. Our very last spot was a small pond off one of the river mouths that usually holds a good number of fish in the winter. We found a large school of upper and over slot fish sitting in the middle of this pond in about 4ft of water. We Power Poled down and proceeded to catch a few really good fish. We didn’t want to drain the watering hole so we caught about 5 fish then left. All the fish were between 25-29in. We found several more schools of fish while on our way out so it ended up being a productive day. Hopefully they will still be there in a few days for my clients!